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Lesson 13 : Magical Tarots

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Lesson 13 : Magical Tarots Adam McLean's Study Course on the artwork and symbolism of modern tarot Lesson 13 : Magical tarots In the 19th century Tarot was reborn through the French occult revival by such figures as Paul Christian and Eliphas Levi, who gave a magical spin to tarot imagery. In the closing decade of the 19th century the magical order of the Golden Dawn adopted tarot as a major component to their scheme of initiation, and those who aspired to join the higher degrees were given the exercise of creating their own tarot deck. Some examples of these Golden Dawn tarots still exist. First we see a drawing by the poet W.B. Yeats, who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of a design for the Temperance card, next to this is the Star card design used in the order, and finally a coloured drawing of the Temperance card by Dr Felkin a prominent member of the Order. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was extremely influential on the way which magic evolved during the early 20th century, though its rituals and study material remained to a great extent out of the public domain until the stream of publications about this order that were produced in the 1970’s and 80’s. A.E. Waite was a notable member of the Order, though he later set up his own magical or mystical group. Out of this emerged the Rider Waite deck, created by Waite and Pamela Coleman-Smith. There is so much written on the background to this deck but we will not go into all its complex history in this course - though it is a very worthwhile investigation. A whole study course could easily be devoted to this one deck! Those of you with sufficient interest should, as an exercise, undertake some research into the ___________________________________________________________________________________ Lesson 13 Page 1 - This lesson is Copyright © Adam McLean 2006 origins of the Rider-Waite deck. Waite’s Order was responsible for another amazing tarot deck, but one which is almost entirely unknown as it is held within the organisation that inherited Waite’s papers. These are the tarot designs by J.D. Trinick made in 1921-22. Some of these were recently published in Decker and Dummett’s book A History of the Occult Tarot 1870-1970, 2002. Sadly it is unlikely that this beautiful tarot will ever be published, and instead will continue as one of the hidden gems of early 20th century tarot art. Various people with interests in magic worked with tarot imagery during the first half of the 20th century, but it was not till the 1940’s that a tarot entirely inspired by magical ideas emerged - the Aleister Crowley deck painted by Lady Freida Harris. These designs were originally issued in black and white illustrations in a limited edition of Crowley’s Book of Thoth in 1944, but her paintings were, some fifteen years later, published as the Thoth deck in 1969. The wonderful flowing forms, and dense, busy textured backgrounds certainly moved tarot art forwards and inspired many of the next generation of tarot artists. Freida Harris’ style is obviously influenced by 19th century symbolist art, art nouveau, and art deco. Apparently she was not particularly knowledgeable about tarot and must have relied on Crowley. She made a number of different designs for various cards, before a final version was arrived at. Once the Thoth tarot appeared, many magicians decided to issue decks as a way of reflecting their individual magical philosophy. We can form a list of some of these. Not all were particularly ‘magical’ in inspiration, but held more to traditional tarot images. 1977 A Thelemic Tarot - Augustus Donelly 1978 Golden Dawn tarot - Robert Wang 1980 Hermetic Tarot - Godfrey Dowson 1980 Le Tarot Magique (Magical Tarot) - Frederic Lionel 1983 Tree-of-Life Tarot - Rufus Campausen and Apolonia van Leeuwen 1984 Gareth Knight Tarot - Sander Little 1985 Tarot des Mages 1986 Magickal Tarot - Anthony Clark 1991 Servants of the Light - Jo Gill and Anthony Clark 1994 Tarot of Ceremonial Magick - Lon and Constance DuQuette 1999 Tarot of the Sephiroth - Dan Staroff 2000 Enochian Tarot - Gerald and Betty Schueler and Sallie Ann Glassman 2001 Golden Dawn Magical Tarot - Sandra Tabatha Cicero 2002 Dion Fortune Tarot - David Williams 2004 Libet T - Andrea Serio 2004 The Book of Kaos Tarot - Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule 2004 Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn - Richard Dudschus and David Sledzinski ___________________________________________________________________________________ Lesson 13 Page 2 - This lesson is Copyright © Adam McLean 2006 Let us first look at those magical tarots which drew upon the Crowley Thoth deck. 1977 A Thelemic Tarot - Augustus Donelly 1999 Tarot of the Sephiroth - Dan Staroff 2004 Libet T - Andrea Serio These three decks rework the imagery of the Freida Harris paintings. Let us compare the Fool cards from the Thoth and these later derivatives. The Thelemic tarot, produced by Augustus Donelly as a signed limited edition of 499, was printed as black and white line drawings, but I have a copy in which the Fool card has been handcoloured. We notice, in all these versions, one of the characteristic features of Freida Harris’ Fool design, the spiral which circles around the main figure. None of these decks are slavish copies of the original Harris paintings but rather use her images as the starting point for their own interpretation of the design. The original designs for the tarot used in the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were similarly taken up by later tarot artists. 1978 Golden Dawn tarot - Robert Wang 2001 Golden Dawn Magical Tarot - Sandra Tabatha Cicero 2004 Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn - Richard Dudschus and David Sledzinski For some reason I don’t entirely understand, the creators of the original Golden Dawn tarot designs, Mathers and Westcott, adopted a number of variations in the symbolism. We see this particularly in the Lovers card, where the usual conventional meeting of the man and woman, is replaced by the classical myth of Perseus and Andromeda. Here the hero Perseus, he who cut off the head of the gorgon Medusa, rescues Andromeda who has been chained to a rock in the sea by the monster Cetus. Perseus is, of course, captivated by the beauty of Andromeda and they marry. This Perseus-Andromeda idea is carried in all the tarots based on the Golden Dawn and is not found in many other decks (except Godfrey Dowson’s Hermetic Tarot, which though reflecting some Golden Dawn elements is really his own creative envisaging). ___________________________________________________________________________________ Lesson 13 Page 3 - This lesson is Copyright © Adam McLean 2006 Golden Dawn Felkin Wang Cicero Golden Dawn Magical A number of the 1960-80’s period British magicians have had tarot card designs issued in their names or those of their organizations. 1984 Gareth Knight Tarot - Sander Little 1991 Servants of the Light - Jo Gill and Anthony Clark 2002 Dion Fortune Tarot - David Williams These tarots fail to live up to the deep understanding of magic that these authors display in their books, and do not seem to incorporate their magical ideas, but instead are conventional tarots. The Gareth Knight deck is perhaps rather simplistic. The Dion Fortune designs try to marry simple child like drawings with photo-collage elements. Both these decks, it seems, let down the people in whose name they were issued, and though they are competent enough tarots no magical insight is presented to us. This group of tarots issued in the name of the three major British magicians of the mid to late 20th century, is saved by the delightful paintings that Jo Gill with the help of Anthony Clark made for the Servants of Light deck. The S.O.L. is the magical organization run by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki during the 1980’s up to the present. It provides courses, levels of initiations, conferences and other meetings on magic. The artwork for the S.O.L. is truly remarkable, with great attention given to the Major arcana. Here we find detailed and wonderfully composed thoughtful imagery. The Major arcana were originally painted in the late 1970’s by Jo Gill (who later produced a tarot under her own name). In the late 80’s when it became obvious to Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki that it would be possible to have this published as a deck, she asked Anthony Clark to produce the Minor arcana. Clark has succeeded well at ___________________________________________________________________________________ Lesson 13 Page 4 - This lesson is Copyright © Adam McLean 2006 completing the deck and complementing Jo Gill’s images within the limitations of his own art style, and these two work well together. It is a difficult task for someone to complete another artists work but Clark has here done this extremely well and with great sensitivity. He, himself, produced a magical tarot which we will look at shortly. The SOL deck quickly went out of print and is well sought after and usually fetches a high secondhand price. Gill Gill Clark The next group of magical tarots are those which substantially incorporate magical correspondences into the designs. 1980 Hermetic Tarot - Godfrey Dowson 1980 Le Tarot Magique (Magical Tarot) - Frederic Lionel 1985 Tarot des Mages 1986 Magickal Tarot - Anthony Clark 1994 Tarot of Ceremonial Magick - Lon and Constance DuQuette The Hermetic tarot is a relatively early magical tarot, being a series of pen and ink drawings made 1975-77 by Godfrey Dowson, a self-taught freelance illustrator. He later became involved in creating graphics for computer games. His tarot must have been among his earlier works. The title card bears the information “based on the esoteric workings of the Secret Order of the Golden Dawn”, however, this is not a deck, like the ones we looked at earlier, directly inspired by the Golden Dawn.
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